Jonathan
Cook is a British-born independent journalist based (since September
2001) in the predominantly Arab city of Nazareth, Israel and is the
"first foreign correspondent (living) in the Israeli Arab city...."
He's a former reporter and editor of regional newspapers, a freelance
sub-editor with national newspapers, and a staff journalist for the
London-based Guardian and Observer newspapers. He's also written for
The Times, Le Monde diplomatique, the International Herald Tribune,
Al-Ahram Weekly and Aljazeera.net. In February 2004, he founded the
Nazareth Press Agency.

Cook states
why he's in Nazareth as follows: to give himself "greater freedom
to reflect on the true nature of the (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict
and (gain) fresh insight into its root causes." He "choose(s)
the issues (he) wish(es) to cover (and so is) not constrained by the
'treadmill' of the mainstream media....which gives disproportionate
coverage to the concerns of the powerful (so it) makes much of their
Israel/Palestine reporting implausible."

Living
among Arabs, "things look very different" to Cook. "There
are striking, and disturbing, similarities between" the Palestinian
experience inside Israel and within the Occupied Territories. "All
have faced Zionism's appetite for territory and domination, as well
as repeated (and unabated) attempts at ethnic cleaning."

Cook authored
two important books and contributed to others. His first one in 2006
was titled "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and
Democratic State." It's the rarely told story of the plight of
the 1.4 million Palestinian Israeli citizens living inside the Jewish
State, the discrimination against them, the reasons why, and the likely
future consequences from it. Israel's "demographic problem"
is the issue as Cook explains. It's the time when a faster-growing
Palestinian population (aside from the diaspora) becomes a majority,
and the very character of a "Jewish State" is threatened.
Israel's response - state-sponsored repression and violent ethnic
cleansing to prevent it - in the Territories as well as and in Israel.

Cook's
newest book, just published, is called "Israel and the Clash
of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East."
It's the subject of this review in the wake of advance praise. Noted
author John Pilger calls it "One of the most cogent understandings
of the modern Middle East I have read. It is superb, because the author
himself is a unique witness" to events and powerfully documents
them. This review covers them in-depth along with some of this writer's
reflections on the region from America.

Introducing
his topic, Cook begins with Iraq and states upfront that "civil
war and partition were the intended outcomes of invasion." Separation
and conflict were planned, they serve America's interests, they're
not haphazard post-invasion events, and they originated far from Washington.

From the
early 1980s, it was Israeli policy to subdue the Palestinians, fragment
Arab rivals, and foster ethnic and religious discord to maintain unchallengeable
regional dominance. Bush administration neocons chose the same strategy.
Like Israel, they want to neutralize the region through division and
separation and make it work even though prior to invading Iraq, Sunni
and Shia neighborhoods were indistinguishable, and the country had
the highest intermarriage rate in the region.

The scheme
is "Ottomanisation," and it worked for Ottoman Turkey against
a more dominant Islam. Israel sees four advantages to it:

-- regional
instability may lead to the breakup of Saudi-dominated OPEC, weaken
the kingdom's influence in Washington, and diminish its ability to
finance Islamic extremists and Palestinian resistance; and

Washington
supported the scheme post-9/11, the "war on terror" was
born, a clash of civilizations ensued, and the idea was that "Control
of oil could be secured on the same terms as Israeli regional hegemony:
by spreading instability across the Middle East" and Central
Asia through a new-type divide and conquer strategy. For Israel, it
weakens regional rivals and dampens Palestinian nationalism and their
hopes for "meaningful statehood."

Regime
Overthrow in Iraq

Removing
Saddam Hussein was justified to disarm a dangerous dictator threatening
the region. It was untrue and based on "False Pretenses"
according to a study by two nonprofit journalism organizations. On
January 22, it was posted on the Center for Public Integrity web site.
It's "an exhaustive examination of the record" that shows
the President and his seven top officials "waged a carefully
orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat" Iraq
posed to galvanize public opinion and go to war "under decidedly
false pretenses."

At least
532 separate speeches, briefings, interviews, testimonies and more
provide the evidence. They show a concerted web of lies became the
administration's case for war even though it's clear Iraq had no WMDs
or any ties to Al-Queda. Numerous bipartisan investigations drew the
same conclusion, including those by the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence in 2004 and 2006, the multinational Iraq Survey Group's
"Duelfer Report," and even the dubious 9/11 Commission.

The study
cites 232 false Bush statements alone about WMDs and 28 others about
links to Al-Queda. Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul
Wolfowitz and others put out the same lies that increased after August
2002 and spiked much higher in the weeks preceding invasion. In all,
the study documented 935 false statements, the dominant media spread
them, their deception is now revealed, and yet the administration
avoided any responsibility for its actions and the media is unapologetic.
In addition, there are no congressional investigations, and the war
is still misportrayed as a liberating one when its clear intent was
to erase a nation, divide and rule it, turn it into a free market
paradise, use it as a launching platform to dominate the region, and
control its oil.

Saddam
was never a credible threat. In addition, he'd been effectively disarmed
in the early 1990s, but US officials suppressed what UN weapons inspectors'
learned - the Gulf War neutralized Iraq and "there were no unresolved
disarmament issues." Further, Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel,
ran the country's WMD program in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1995,
he defected to the West, was thoroughly debriefed, and confirmed that
there was no nuclear program, and "Iraq destroyed all its chemical
and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them."

The story
was widely reported at the time, including a front page New York Times
August 12 article headlined "Cracks in Baghdad" plus several
subsequent follow-ups as events developed. It was then buried, however,
and never resurfaced in the run-up to March, 2003. For Iraqis, the
consequences were horrific, and they began after Saddam was tricked
into invading Kuwait.

Four days
later, Operation Desert Shield was launched, economic sanctions followed,
a large US troop buildup began, and a sweeping Kuwait-funded PR campaign
prepared the public for Operation Desert Shield. It began on January
17, 1991, ended on February 28, caused mass killing, and all essential
to life facilities were destroyed, effectively returning the country
to its pre-industrial condition.

Twelve
years of the most comprehensive, genocidal sanctions followed. They
included a crippling trade embargo and an air blockade to enforce
it. Adequate humanitarian essentials were restricted, and the 1995
UN Oil-for-Food Program was a well-planned scam. Until it ended after
March 2003, it provided the equivalent of 21 cents a day for food
and 4 cents for medicines. In addition, vital drugs and other essentials
were banned because of their claimed potential "dual use."

The toll
was horrific and got two UN heads of Iraqi humanitarian relief to
resign with Dennis Halliday saying in 1998 that he did so because
he "had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies
the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively
killed over one million individuals, children and adults," including
5000 Iraqi children a month in his judgment.

Conditions
got worse post-March 2003 with street violence commonplace; mounting
deaths and injuries; and a total breakdown of essential services,
including electricity, clean drinking water, sanitation, medical care,
and education made worse by mass unemployment and poverty - an occupation-created
humanitarian disaster of epic proportions that continues to worsen.

Four million
refugees left the country or are internally displaced, one-third of
the population needs emergency aid, millions can't get enough food,
malnourishment is rampant, medical care barely exists, and the British
medical journal The Lancet published the Johns Hopkins University
School of Public Health study on the death toll in October 2006. It
estimated 655,000 violent deaths since March 2003 that could be as
high as 900,000 at the time (and now much higher) because interviewers
couldn't survey the country's most violent areas and omitted from
the study thousands of families in which all members were killed.

Cook quoted
a Palestinian academic, Karma Nabulsi, citing similarities between
Iraq and occupied Palestine - two populations "living in a Hobbesian
vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed,
cowed, ruled by disparate militias, gangs, religious ideologues and
extremists, broken up into ethnic and religious tribalism and co-opted
collaborationists." Palestinians and Iraqis resist, demand their
freedom, and polls shows overwhelming numbers want the occupations
to end. In Iraq, almost no one thinks America came to liberate them
or establish democracy.

Nearly
everyone knows Washington's real intent - permanent occupation to
control the country's oil so Big Oil giants can exploit it for profit,
deny Iraqis their own natural wealth, and give America "veto
power" over rivals and potential ones to assure their compliance.

A September
1978 Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum is particularly notable. It
listed three US Middle East objectives:

-- "assure
continuous access to petroleum resources,

-- prevent
an inimical power or combination of powers from establishing hegemony,
and

-- assure
the survival of Israel as an independent state in a stable relationship
with contiguous Arab states."

Of great
concern to US planners, then and now, is "curbing and crushing
(Arab and Iranian) nationalism that might inspire Middle Eastern states"
to claim the right to their own resources and deny the West their
benefits. Twentieth century history documents how Britain and America
controlled the region, installed puppet rulers, backed repressive
dictators, removed uncompliant ones, and looted oil-rich states for
their gain. Iraq is now exploited, local industry was crushed, US
corporations plunder the country, and the so-called hydrocarbon law
gives Big Oil the same right to the nation's oil - if it's enacted
but so far it's stalled.

The Iraqi
cabinet approved it last February, but that's where things now stand
because of mass public opposition to a blueprint for plunder. If the
puppet parliament passes it, foreign investors will reap a bonanza
of resources leaving Iraq with just slivers. Its complex provisions,
still being manipulated, give the Iraqi National Oil Company exclusive
control to less than one-fifth of the country's operating fields with
all yet-to-be-discovered deposits (most of Iraq's reserves) set aside
for Big Oil. Even worse, contracts (under "production sharing
agreements") up to 35 years will be granted, all earnings may
be expropriated, and foreign interests have no obligation to invest
in Iraq's economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire local workers,
respect union rights, or share new technologies.

Earlier
in the 20th century, America coveted Middle East oil once its potential
was realized. Post-WW I, however, Britain occupied Iraq and Kuwait,
benefitted most until WW II, miscalculated on Saudi's importance,
and let the Roosevelt administration secure an oil concession in the
1930s that began close ties between the two nations. The President
and King ibn Saud struck a deal. America guaranteed the kingdom's
security in return for a steady supply of oil at stable prices, and
later on, the recycling of huge petrodollar profits into US investments
and military hardware.

Thereafter,
the region was key, and the Carter Doctrine highlighted it after engineering
the Shah's removal in 1979. Carter stated - "Let our position
be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control
of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital
interests of the United States of America (and) will be repelled by
any means necessary, including military force."

Post-9/11,
the Bush Doctrine applied Carter policy globally in the 2002 National
Security Strategy (NSS), later revised and made harsher in 2006. It's
an imperial grand plan for world dominance, preventive wars are the
strategy, the Middle East and Central Asia are its main targets, and
the powerful Israeli Lobby assures Washington and Tel Aviv interests
are in lockstep. More on that below.

The
Long Campaign against Iran

The January
2007 Herzliya, Israel conference was notable for what's become the
country's premiere political event. This one differed from others
in two respects. Forty-two past and present US policy makers were
invited, and attention focused on a Shia "arc of extremism"
with debates and discussion highlighting Iran and Hezbollah.

Participants
claimed Iran spread regional instability, was close to developing
nuclear weapons, and would use them against Israel. There were similar
echoes from the January 2008 conference with comments from speakers
like Ehud Barak saying "The Iranian nuclear threat remains critical
(and) We will not accept an Iran which possesses a nuclear capable
military." General Ephraim Sneh added "Our problem is not
the nuclear problem, but rather the Iranian regime. (It) incorporates
imperial ambition, hatred of Israel, increasing military strength,
and an unlimited budget." Ignored was common knowledge or any
glimmer of truth - that the late Ayatollah Khomeini banned nuclear
weapons development, today's Iranian officials repeatedly stress the
country's only nuclear aim is commercial, and Tehran represents no
threat to Israel or any other country in or outside the region.

Since the
early 1990s, Israel claimed otherwise - that Iran sought nuclear weapons,
represented an existential threat, and had to be confronted. By 1994,
Haaretz reported that the country's top priority was neutralizing
Iran to thwart its regional aspirations because Tehran threatened
to acquire nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, and had the ability
to export terrorism and revolution to subvert secular Arab regimes.
Iraq was already under sanctions, but Israel saw both countries as
a combined threat. Weakening one would only strengthen the other,
so both had to be smashed.

With Iraq
under occupation, Iran's now called the center of world terrorism
and packaged with Syria and Hezbollah as Israel's axis of evil with
Hamas added later after its early 2006 electoral victory. Israel has
big aims - to become a regional hegemon, prevent a rival power from
influencing the "peace process," and deny the Palestinians
any hope of ending the occupation. It thus manufactured an Iranian
threat and along with Washington blocks dialogue and negotiation.

Claiming
Iran is a nuclear menace runs counter to the facts. Tehran is years
away from producing nuclear power, and IAEA head Mouhammad el-Baradei
reports no evidence that Iran is building or seeks to build nuclear
weapons. He also told the press last August that "Iran is ready
to discuss all outstanding issues which triggered the crisis in confidence.
It's a significant step. There are clear guidelines (and Iran is not)
dallying with the agency (or) prolong(ing) negotiations to avoid sanctions....Iran
(deserves) a chance to prove its stated goodwill."

IAEA also
reported Iran's uranium enrichment program slowed, operates well below
capacity, and isn't producing nuclear fuel in significant amounts.
It had only 1968 centrifuges functioning, several hundred others in
various stages of assembly or testing, and its enrichment level is
well below what's needed to build a nuclear bomb. In addition, in
December 2007, the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) reported
that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 (without evidence
one ever existed) and has none of these weapons in its arsenal.

The Bush
administration and Israel sidestepped NIE and denounced the IAEA,
called it an Iranian ploy to buy time, and "There was no (Israeli)
debate about which country should be targeted after Iraq." The
goal was to isolate Iran, end its threat to Israel, but avoid the
mistake of invading and occupying another country with Iraq already
out of control. Other choices were preferable - stoking internal conflict,
inciting instability, attacking by air, and deciding which reports
to believe.

An August
2007 one called "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper
on WMDs in the Middle East" was particularly alarming. British
experts Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher prepared it, other evidence
of impending conflict supported it, no date was given, but they stated
things are too far along in planning to stop. They wrote the Pentagon
has plans for a "massive, multi-front, full-spectrum" shock
and awe-type attack with no ground invasion. Its aim is to target
10,000 sites with bombers and long-range missiles, destroy the country's
military capacity, nuclear energy sites, economic infrastructure and
other targets to destabilize and oust its regime or reduce the country
to a "weak or failed state."

Washington
also pressured the UN to impose sanctions on Iran. In July 2006, the
Security Council passed Resolution 1696 demanding Tehran halt enriching
uranium by August 31 or be sanctioned. UN Resolution 1737 followed
in December, cited the country's nuclear program and imposed limited
sanctions with further ones applied after UN Resolution 1747 passed
in March. On January 22, 2008, the five permanent Security Council
members and Germany agreed to a third round of sanctions that was
less than what the Bush administration wanted.

The cat
and mouse game continues, the threat of wider war remains, and nothing
may be resolved with the current administration in power. Nor is there
much chance for change under a new one in 2009 as hawkish candidates
from both parties dominate the race and support Israel's design on
Iran.

The Islamic
Republic remains Target One, but on July 12, 2006 the Olmert government
surprised. It attacked Lebanon in a blatant act of aggression. It
later came out the war was long-planned, Washington was on board,
and a minor incident became the pretext to launch it. The target was
Hezbollah, and the scheme was to remove what former Deputy Secretary
of State Richard Armitage once called "the A-team of international
terrorism." That was his way of noting a long-time Israeli irritant
that was able to liberate Lebanon's south by ending the IDF's 22 year
occupation in May 2000.

By summer
2006, strong rhetoric suggested a wider war with Iran and Syria. Both
countries were accused of supplying Hezbollah with thousands of rockets
to "wipe Israel off the map," and they were being indiscriminately
used to do it.

In fact,
Hezbollah was founded as a national liberation movement after Israel
invaded Lebanon in 1982. It's not an Islamist or terrorist organization
as its founding mission statement reveals. It was an "open letter
to all the oppressed in Lebanon and the world" stating its aims
- to drive the US, French and Israeli occupiers out of Lebanon, defeat
the right wing Christian Maronite Phalange party allied with Israel,
and give our people "liberty (in) the form of government they
desire." It added "we don't want to impose Islam upon anybody.
We don't want Islam to reign in Lebanon by force as is the case with
the Maronites today."

Today,
Hezbollah is a legitimate political and social organization that maintains
a military wing for self-defense. It represents Lebanon's Shia population
(40% of the total) and is respected for running a comprehensive network
of schools, health facilities and other social services available
to anyone in need, not just Shias. Nonetheless, it's been unfairly
branded anti-Jewish, accused of wanting to destroy Israel, and Washington
put it on its Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list in 1997.

In summer
2006, Hezbollah responded to Israeli aggression as its legitimate
right. It targeted military, not civilian, sites with spotty accuracy,
hit some, and proved to Israel's embarrassment that its forces, Iran
and Syria knew site locations that could be struck more accurately
with more powerful weapons in retaliation if attacked.

The threat
is real, but Hezbollah was the first order of business. Its rockets
had to be eliminated as Seymour Hersh reported. Otherwise, "You
hit Iran (or Syria first), Hezbollah then bombs Tel Aviv and Haifa,"
but more was at stake as well. Backing Lebanon's Siniora government
against a weakened Hezbollah and asserting the army's control in the
south was key. In addition, with Iran and Syria potential targets,
the Pentagon wanted Israel to field test its bunker-buster bombs to
learn their effectiveness in advance.

Hezbollah
was more formidable than expected, it prevailed against Israel's might,
its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasralah, is stronger than ever, his support
extends beyond his Shia base in the south, the IDF suffered a humiliating
defeat, and that's where things now stand. Had the Olmert government
prevailed, Cook reports that an air attack on Syria was planned, President
Bashar Assad apparently knew it, a credible Washington source revealed
it, and the Israeli media suggested the Bush administration wanted
Israel to proceed.

Further
hawkishness came from Hebrew University professor Martin van Creveld,
a respected military historian "with intimate knowledge of the
army's inner workings and its collective ethos." His March 2007
Jewish Daily Forward commentary argued that Syria planned to attack
Israel no later than October 2008, possibly with chemical weapons,
but no evidence was cited. He merely said the Assad government "had
been on an armaments shopping spree in Russia" and let readers
draw their own conclusions. Israel, he claimed, was thus justified
to attack preemptively even though there was credible evidence that
Syria sought resolution on the Golan issue, made overtures to negotiate,
and the Olmert government believed Assad was serious.

Nonetheless,
he was rebuffed and hard line Washington and Tel Aviv officials prevailed.
Appeasing Iran and Syria was off the table, removing their "dire
threat" had to be confronted, and it hardly mattered that none
existed. Then came November 2006. Olmert's approval rating was dismal,
and a newspaper poll showed Netanyahu would best him in fresh elections.
US Republicans were just as weak. The November 2006 congressional
elections sent a strong message - end the war and bring home the troops.
For the first time since 9/11, neocon dominance was uncertain, tensions
surfaced in the administration, and a change of direction looked possible.

James Baker's
Iraq Study Group recommended one in December. It argued that US forces
should be gradually withdrawn from Iraq, Iran and Syria should be
engaged to help stabilize "what was clearly a failed state,"
and the home front battle lines were drawn. Key Bush advisors continued
to claim Iran was the problem by trying to undermine Washington in
Iraq. It was stirring up Shia resistance, arming the Sunnis, and countering
Tehran required greater US involvement, not an exit.

For a while,
it wasn't clear how things would turn out, but in the end the administration
remained hard line, and in early 2007 announced a 30,000 troop surge,
stepped up pressure against Iran, and positioned a major naval strike
force in the Gulf. At the same time, President Ahmadinejad became
another "Hitler" and was misquoted as saying he was trying
to "wipe Israel off the map." He actually said "this
regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time"
in a reference to its military conquest, illegally occupying Jerusalem,
colonizing the Occupied Territories, and repressing the Palestinian
people. Ultimately, these policies will fail, and respected analysts
say the same thing.

Ahmadinejad
made no reference to Jews, only a racist Israeli government that relegates
non-Jews to second class status or worse. Regardless of his words
and meaning, every move and comment he now makes is scrutinized for
any way to attack him.

End
of the Strongmen

Cook asks
why were Israel and the US extending the "war on terror"
to the strongest Middle East state, Iran, since it's the one most
able to alleviate crisis in Iraq? Why turn a "clash of civilisations"
into an added Sunni-Shia struggle and risk making an unstable situation
worse? Many Middle Eastern states are "uncomfortable amalgams
of Sunni and Shia populations" because they were combined into
unnatural states post-WW I. By late 2006, internal conflicts destabilized
Iraq and Lebanon, threatened to spread, and Washington and Tel Aviv
were encouraging it.

By confronting
Iran and Syria, things may only worsen, but White House reasoning
is that this as preferable to a united resistance targeting its occupation.
Israel has the same view, and it lay behind the summer 2006 Lebanon
war. At its start, it was hoped conflict would unite Christians and
Sunnis against Hezbollah and repeat the sectarian civil war that ravaged
the country from 1975 to 1990. Instead, the nation united against
Israel, and Hezbollah's power and overall status was enhanced, the
opposite of what Tel Aviv planned.

The same
strategy is playing out in the Occupied Territories, but its outcome
is unresolved. After Hamas' electoral victory, Israel refused recognition,
and the US and West went along. All outside aid was cut off, an economic
embargo and sanctions were imposed, and the legitimate government
was isolated. Stepped up repression followed along with repeated IDF
incursions and attacks, and the idea was to foment internal conflict
on Gaza streets. It went on for months, then subsided (with occasional
flare-ups) when Hamas prevailed against Fatah. It defeated Mahmoud
Abbas' heavily US-Israeli-armed paramilitaries that were led by Mohammed
Dahlan. In spite of defeat, Israel achieved a long-standing aim. It
split the Palestinians into two rival camps in Gaza and the West Bank
and recognized the unelected Abbas government as legitimate.

Israel
plans the same fate for Syria, but Cook says its "closed society
(is) more difficult to read." Nonetheless, Congress passed the
Syria Accountability Act in late 2003 to justify a US and/or Israeli
future attack on any pretext that's never hard to find. A clause in
the law states Syria is "accountable for any harm to Coalition
armed forces or to any United States citizen in Iraq if the government
of Syria is found to be responsible" even without proof. Whatever
Syria does, it's thwarted despite clear evidence it seeks peace with
the West and Israel and will make concessions in return for resolution
to long-outstanding issues like the Golan.

Cook thus
wonders "who controls American foreign policy? Does the dog wag
the tail or the opposite given the power of Israel to influence policy?
One camp argues the former with distinguished figures like Noam Chomsky
believing Washington has a "consistent, predictable and monolithic
view of American interests abroad" and how best to secure them.

How to
explain Iraq then since the administration rejected the advice of
many of its key policy advisors, including what Big Oil wanted. Instead,
it opted for a messy "regime overthrow," not a simpler "regime
change" that worked well in the past without war and occupation.
In addition, attacking Iran guarantees regional turmoil, greater instability,
regimes likely toppling, intensified Iraq conflict targeting Americans,
higher oil prices, possible world recession, and no assurance of a
favorable outcome.

Why risk
it when Iran sought dialogue for years, but Washington consistently
refuses. Cook cites two US academics, John Mearsheimer and Stephen
Walt and might have included James Petras' work and his powerfully
important book titled "The Power of Israel in the United States."
This writer reviewed it in-depth and was greatly struck by its persuasive
content. It documents the Lobby's depth and breath at the highest
levels of government, throughout Congress, business boardrooms, academia,
the clergy (especially dominant Christian fundamentalists) and the
mass media. Together they assure full and unconditional support for
most Israeli interests most of the time going back decades. Wars included
- in the Occupied Territories, against Lebanon, the Gulf War, the
current Iraq war as well as all Israeli wars since 1967 and the prospect
of engaging Iran and Syria despite strong opposition at home.

Cook presents
his own view saying "the dog and tail wag each other," and
that's Israel's strategy by making both countries dependent on the
other for dominance in and outside the region. He believes Israel
persuaded administration neocons that both countries shared mutual
goals. It worked because it placed US interests of global domination
and controlling oil at the heart of strategy.

Consider
also a long-standing "special relationship" between the
two countries going back decades. Senate Foreign Relations Committee
private meeting transcripts before and after the 1967 war reveal it.
They explain, early on, that Washington valued Israel as a strategic
ally in a vitally important part of the world. Aside from oil, the
Johnson administration called Israel a useful Cold War asset at a
time Russia courted leading Arab states and made progress. Its regional
wars were also helpful to confront the kind of nationalist threat
Egypt's Nasser represented. They split regional states into irreconcilable
camps - weak Gulf ones like the Saudis needing US protection; stronger
regimes in Egypt, Jordan and Iran under the Shah; and outliers like
Syria, Libya, Iraq and Iran after 1979.

Cook recounts
Ariel Sharon's vision of empire as a regional superpower in an early
1980s speech he never made. He radically departed from Israel's traditional
strategy of either seeking peace or directly confronting hostile neighbors.
His new thinking was to extend Tel Aviv's influence to the whole region
by achieving qualitative and technological weapons superiority.

Sharon
was a seasoned general, his views were respected, and he greatly influenced
younger officers who rose in prominence and, in the case of Ehud Barak,
became Prime Minister like himself. He believed Israel should impose
its dictates and force other regional states to comply or be punished.

The "Sharon
Doctrine," as its called, also reflected the views National Security
Adviser, General Uzi Dayan, and Mossad head, Ephraim Halevy stated
in December 2001. They called 9/11 a "Hannukkah miracle"
because it gave Israel a chance to marginalize and confront its enemies.
Henceforth, all "Islamic terror" elements could be grouped
together as threats to the region's rulers. Confronting it was crucial,
so after Afghanistan Iraq, Iran and Syria were next "as soon
as possible." It was Dick Cheney's vision of permanent "war
that won't end in our lifetimes."

In 1982,
Israeli journalist and former Foreign Affairs Ministry senior advisor,
Oded Yinon, proposed an even more radical idea. Like Sharon, he advocated
transforming Israel into a regional power with an added goal: breaking
up Arab states into ethnic and confessional groupings that Israel
could more easily control. Similar to Huntington's "clash of
civilizations," Yinon suggested we were witnessing cataclysmic
times, the "collapse of the world order," and he identified
the threat: "The strength, dimension, accuracy and quality of
nuclear and non-nuclear weapons will overturn most of the world in
a few years." He believed an age of terror emerged that would
challenge Israel with growing Arab militancy.

His remedy
- install minority population leaders who are dependent on colonial
powers even after nominal independence. It worked in Lebanon under
the Maronites, in Syria under the Alawis, and in Jordan under Hashemite
monarchs. Yinon believed these states were weak, as were oil-rich
ones, could be easily dissolved, and doing it was key to forcibly
displacing Palestinians from the Territories and inside Israel. Furthermore,
achieving dominance depended on dissolving Arab states so Israel would
be unchallengeable and able to complete its ethnic cleansing process.

Remaking
the Middle East

After the
Soviet Russia dissolved, Israel's military had to convince Washington
it could be useful in a post-Cold War world. Would it be a bullying
enforcer or a regional guarantor of US and Israeli dominance by sowing
disorder and instability? In the 1990s, "two new kinds of Middle
Eastern political and paramilitary actors" emerged - Sunni jihadis
called Al-Queda and elements like the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hezbollah
in south Lebanon. They represent formidable challenges that aren't
easily intimidated or bullied.

In this
type world, threats are at a sub-state level, so Yinon's scheme was
appealing - encourage discord and feuding within nations, destabilize
them, and arrange their dismemberment into mini-states. Tribes and
sectarian elements could be turned on each other, and alliances with
non-Arab, non-Muslim groups like Christians, Kurds and Druze could
be cultivated to advantage.

One problem
remains, however - the possibility that another Middle East state
may develop nuclear weapons, challenge Israel's dominance and get
away with it. Nonetheless, Israel planned "organized chaos"
across the region and convinced administration neocons the scheme
was sensible. They had every reason to approve, and powerful opposition
at home aside, they're destabilizing the region along with Israel.
There's no guaranteed outcome, the subsequent fallout is unpredictable,
but consider the possibilities. The administration is quite able to
vaporize Iran and Syria and end the homeland republic if that's the
plan. It's also what other states have to fear.

These actions
convinced Russian hard-liners that America plans regime change and
further fragmentation of the Federation. China sees this, too, and
knows it may be next. It's gotten both powers to ally in two organizations
for their own self-defense and to compete with the US for control
of Central Asia's vast reserves - the Asian Energy Security Grid and
the more significant Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that
was formed in 2001 for political, diplomatic, economic and security
reasons as a counterweight to an encroaching US-dominated NATO. Other
regional powers may also join one or both alliances, including India,
Iran and even South Korea and Japan as a new millennium Great Game
unfolds.

On the
other side are the US and Israel with the Occupied Territories a test
laboratory for what they have in mind for the region. Israel has been
at it since the 1967 war when the idea was to expel Palestinians to
Jordan because "Jordan is Palestine." The only debate was
how to do it.

At the
same time, Israel long considered dismembering Arab countries into
feuding mini-states, and in the early 1980s, Haaretz's military correspondent,
Ze'ev Schiff, wrote that Israel's "best" interests would
be served by "the dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a
Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part." Ever since,
Israel implemented this practice in the Territories along with testing
urban warfare tactics, new weapons and crowd control techniques. Workable
or not, it's been a boon to business and it's built Israel's economy
around responding to violence at home and everywhere.

Israeli
technology firms pioneered the homeland security industry, still dominate
it, and it's made the country the most tech-dependent one in the world
and its fourth largest arms exporter after the US (far and away the
biggest), Russia and France. The US Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) is one of its biggest customers for high-tech fences, unmanned
drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger
profiling, prisoner interrogation systems, thermal imaging systems,
fiber optics security systems, tear gas products and ejector systems
and much more.

With products
like these and lessons learned from the Territories, Israel believes
it can abandon the old puppet strongman model of controlling populations.
It wants no part of a "Palestinian dictator" who might encourage
Palestinian nationalism, challenge Israeli rule, and disrupt settlement
development plans in the Territories. Building them depends on keeping
Palestinians divided, weak, unable to resist, and easier to remove
from land Israel wants to incorporate into a greater Israel that includes
south Lebanon.

After the
1967 war, Israel prevented new Palestinian leaders from emerging and
first tried to manage the population along family or communal lines
by co-opting its leaders or eliminating ones who became obstacles.
By 1981, Sharon (as defense minister) refined the scheme into what
was named "Village Leagues" that were local anti-PLO militias.
The system was abandoned, however, when Palestinians rebelled against
their collaborating leaders so Israel tried new approaches.

Most important
was the Muslim Brotherhood (that had roots in Egypt) that later became
Hamas in the late 1980s. Israel, at the time, believed traditional
Islamic elements were more easily managed than PLO nationalists, would
later learn otherwise, and it led to a radically new experiment -
the Oslo process. It began secretly with a post-Gulf War weakened
PLO, specified no outcome, and let Israel delay, refuse to make concessions,
and continue colonizing the Territories. For their part Palestinians
renounced armed struggle, recognized Israel's right to exist, agreed
to leave major unresolved issues for indefinite later final status
talks, and got nothing in return.

Yasser
Arafat and his cohorts got what they wanted - a get-out-of-Tunis free
pass where they were in exile following the 1982 Lebanon war. They
got to come home, take charge of their people and become Israel's
enforcer. Interestingly, Cook points out a little known fact. Many
high-level Israeli security figures opposed Oslo. They saw it giving
Arafat an "internationalist platform" to encourage Palestinian
nationalism that might undermine Israel. After Rabin's assassination,
it wasn't surprising that the spirit of Oslo died, Arafat became isolated,
spent much of the second intifada a prisoner in his Ramallah compound,
and died in a Paris hospital in November 2004, the victim of Israeli
poisoning with convincing evidence to prove it.

In the
meanwhile, Israel scrapped Oslo and tried a new approach - cantonizing
Gaza and the West Bank to crush organized resistance and dissolve
Palestinian nationalism. It began with checkpoints and curfews. Then
it was hardened into forced separation, displacement, willful harassment,
land seizures, home demolitions, bypass roads, and state-sponsored
violence matching lightly-armed people against the world's fourth
most powerful military with every imaginable weapon at its disposal
and no hesitancy using them against civilians.

At the
same time, Israel chose a co-optable Mahmoud Abbas over the legitimate
Hamas government. Its leaders will only recognize Israel if Palestinians
are recognized in return and given an independent homeland inside
pre-1967 borders or there's one state for all Israeli citizens. Israel,
of course, refuses, and continues expanding settlements on expropriated
land. In addition, with Abbas' Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in
Gaza, Israel assures the two sides remain divided and continue fighting
each other for control. That's the strategy to keep Palestinians marginalized
and Israel confident that what's now working in the Territories can
be applied advantageously across the region.

That became
Bush administration strategy early on with extremist neocons in charge
led by Dick Cheney. They knew all along that invading and occupying
Iraq would unleash sectarian violence "on an unprecedented scale."
Cook notes that the scheme came out of a 1996 policy paper called
"A Clean Break" that was written by key neocons behind the
war - David Wurmser, Richard Pearle and Douglas Feith. They predicted
that after Saddam fell Iraq would "be ripped apart by the politics
of warlords, tribes, clans, sects and key families" because Sunni
leadership maintained unity through state repression.

Pre-war,
Britain knew it as well, and, in May 2007, a US Senate Intelligence
Committee reported that US intelligence documents warned of post-invasion
chaos because Iraq is one of the least cohesive Middle East states
with rival Sunni, Shia and Kurdish populations. This, however, fits
perfectly with the type occupation Washington wants. It also justifies
the "war on terror," and prepares things for the final solution
Israel advocates - splitting the country into three mini-states: a
Kurdish one in the North, Shias in the South, and Sunnis between them.

Making
it work won't be easy, however, because Iraq's largest cities have
mixed populations. It's the reason the Pentagon plans to cantonize
them Israeli-style by enclosing neighborhoods with barricades and
walls and require special IDs for entry. Israel plans the same thing
for Lebanon where a large Shia population has been marginalized under
the country's "confessional" system. It allocates public
office along religious lines, gives disproportionate power to Christian
and Sunni minorities, but Hezbollah is challenging the pro-western
government with things so far unresolved.

After the
2006 war, Hezbollah got stronger, Washington supports the Siniora
government, and is promoting a "Cedar Revolution" like the
"Orange" and "Rose" ones it successfully engineered
in Ukraine and Georgia. Assassinations and car bombings are part of
the scheme, they're blamed on Syria without evidence, but a more likely
culprit is Mossad that has a long history in the region engineering
this type violence. Cook quotes former US counter-terrorism expert,
Fred Burton, saying the technology used in Lebanon's recent assassinations
is available only to a few countries - the US, Israel, Britain, France
and Russia.

The Pentagon
and CIA are also active in "black operations" in Iran, have
been for many months, and it's no secret why. As in Iraq, Lebanon
and Palestine, it's to create ethnic tensions throughout the country,
promote conflict, and hope it will destabilize the government and
force it into a mistake Washington can jump on in response. A Pentagon
source told Seymour Hersh that their operatives are working with Azeris
in the north, Baluchis in the southeast, Kurds in the northeast, and
their own special forces in-country as well. The pot is bubbling,
and Iran knows it.

It's a
new version of the older colonial "divide and rule" scheme
that so far proved ineffective, and Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah,
thinks he knows what's going on. He says Israel and Washington want
to partition Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Syria. If he's right, as seems
likely, it means the idea is to change the way colonial powers ruled
post-WW I, and Cook challenges it. He believes making it work is "improbable
(and) little more than a deluded fantasy." It worked in Yugoslavia,
but the Arab world is different.

He concludes
his book saying a generation of Washington policy makers have been
"captivated" by thinking the Middle East can be remade by
"spreading instability and inter-communal strife." Instead,
Cook sees a different outcome - new political, religious and social
alliances forming across the region. If Washington pursues its "war
on terror," he sees continued "war without end" with
no victory. After the chaotic Bush years, it's hard disagreeing with
him.

Stephen
Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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